What Is An Advanced Persistent Threat (Apt)?
An advanced persistent threat (APT) is a generic term for an attack execution in which an intruder, or a band of intruders, establishes a lengthy illegal entry on a network to harvest extremely sensitive documents.
Compound attacks with separate stages and a range of attack strategies are known as APT. Many typical attack vectors were first created as part of an APT campaign, the most successful examples being zero-day hacks and malware, tailored credential theft, and lateral action tools. Various attack strategies and various gateways are common in APT activities.
Apt Attacker Goals, And Consequences Faced By Organizations, Include:
- Theft of intellectual property
- Theft of classified data
- Theft of Personal identifiable Information (PII) or other sensitive data
- Sabotage, for example, database deletion
- Complete site takeover
- Obtaining data on infrastructure for reconnaissance purposes
- Obtaining credentials to critical systems
- Access to sensitive or incriminating communications
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An APT Attack in Six Steps
You must understand how APTs work to strengthen your cyber security and successfully avoid, detect, and resolve advanced persistent threats.
- A cybercriminal, also known as a threat actor, infiltrates an organization's network by exploiting an email, network, file, or application vulnerability. Although the network has been corrupted, it has not been breached.
- The advanced malware searches for new network access points and weaknesses or communicates with command-and-control (CnC) servers to acquire new instructions and/or destructive code.
- Malware usually creates numerous points of compromise to ensure that the cyber-attack can continue even if one is shut down.
- Once a threat actor has obtained reliable network access, they collect target information such as account names and passwords. Even though passwords are frequently encrypted, encryption can be broken. After that, the threat actor will be able to identify and access data.
- The malware collects data on a staging server, then infiltrates the network's data, and is completely under the threat actor's control. The network has been infiltrated at this point.
- The APT attack evidence is deleted, but the network remains vulnerable. The data breach can be resumed at any time by the cybercriminal.
Advanced persistent threat (APT) progression
Threat protection from Microsoft comprises integrated, automated security solutions that help safeguard your email, data, applications, devices, and identities against evolving cyber threats.
- A successful APT assault may be split down into three stages:
- Network infiltration.
- Attacker presence expansion.
- Data extraction—all while remaining undetected.
Aspire Tech APT Detection and Protection Measures
APT is a multi-pronged attack that necessitates the use of a variety of security technologies and procedures. These are some of them:
- Email screening Phishing is used in the majority of APT assaults to acquire initial access. These intrusion attempts can be thwarted by filtering emails and blocking malicious links or attachments within them.
- Endpoint security All APT assaults entail the hijacking of endpoint devices. Advanced anti-malware protection and Endpoint Detection and Response can assist in detecting and responding to APT actors' compromise of an endpoint.
- Access control APT risks can be reduced by implementing robust authentication methods and closely managing user accounts, with a special focus on privileged accounts.
- Monitoring of traffic, user and entity behavior At various stages of an APT attack, can assist in detecting penetrations, lateral movement, and exfiltration.
Aspire Tech is not like just another cybersecurity company. We are a highly passionate team of cybersecurity operatives who are exceptionally talented, experienced, and committed to their clients. Our team is composed of intelligence specialists, analysts, skilled attackers, strategists, and educators.
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